Cultural and literary texts are used in the foreign language classroom to support learners’ language development, cultural awareness, and reading comprehension. While classroom activities frequently facilitate a literal understanding of facts and events, these texts offer another potential level of analysis: symbolic dimensions, which focus on how meaning is constructed in the texts in relation to their historical and political contexts, to the readers’ own positionality and subjective experiences, and to the cultural values and beliefs that are attached to these meanings. This paper explores how to teach these symbolic dimensions through an exploration of the notion of symbolic competence. Using personal experiences teaching the legend of La Llorona in a university-level Spanish classroom, I explore two interrelated questions: 1) Can the legend of La Llorona offer insights into theorizations of symbolic competence?; 2) Can theorizations of symbolic competence be applied to the teaching of La Llorona in order to facilitate learners’ critical reflections on its symbolic dimensions? Three project-based classroom activities will be discussed to illustrate teaching for the development of symbolic competence.

This paper argues that any approach to the teaching of history in the second language classroom must consider how history is constructed and what is at stake in such representations. Doing so opens up the possibility of developing students’ symbolic competence through critical reflexivity at three interrelated levels: 1) language itself as wielding symbolic power in the construction and representation of history; 2) the subject positions available through language to negotiate or to alter these constructions; and 3) the larger ideologies and structures of power that operate on language use, historical constructions, and options for negotiating subject positions. Using an example from a textbook, I analyze how the history of the Conquest of the Americas is constructed while demonstrating that what is at stake is the reproduction of the colonial narrative and the negation of other historical representations. At the same time students are positioned as tourists and cultural consumers who are positioned outside of history. I then describe classroom activities that can be usedto modify the textbook activities in order to interrogate meaning-making processes that recognize the emotional resonances and embodied histories of the students as they use language to critically engage in the contested spaces of history and memory.

The focus of this special issue as posed in the call for papers highlighted explorations of symbolic competence at several levels: theory; teaching and learning practices; and research. In this Afterword, we consider these levels central to our reflections on the particular contributions of this special issue as well as to considerations of future areas of inquiry. The guiding questions for each included:

The articles in this special issue have made significant contributions in responding to these questions. These articles all grapple with theorizations of symbolic competence in relationship to questions of symbolic representation and language users’ understandings of the relationships between form and meaning; symbolic action and language users’ manipulation of semiotic resources to meaningfully engage in the multilingual and multimodal game; and, symbolic power in terms of how learners engage these resources to play this game. From pedagogical practice to classroom interactions the articles have all demonstrated the relevance of symbolic competence to the language classroom as well as offering insightful and innovative pedagogical practices designed to potentially support its development. Additionally, they provide differing models of research, from the level of detailed analysis of conversation and turns at talk to thematic analysis of reflections on the implementation of new pedagogical practices and considerations of their potentials.

Over a weekend in April 2015, a community of over one hundred language instructors, language learners, and applied linguists gathered at the University of California, Berkeley, to celebrate the ongoing teaching, research, and service of Claire Kramsch. Several panels took on the challenge of responding to and exemplifying Kramsch’s research in applied linguistics, contributions to language and culture teaching, and service to the community of language educators. The panels presented new studies that shed light on different strands of her interests in applied linguistics: the relationships between technology and second language (L2) learning; the ongoing construction of the multilingual subject; and, history, historicity, and foreign language education.

One implicit thread that linked all the panels together—directly addressed by some panelists—was the relationship between language and symbolic power. For instance, papers such as “Language, power, and the development of disciplinary textual practices” (Gebhard, 2015) and “Communicative language teaching and language under duress: Global contexts for language pedagogy” (Levine & Phipps, 2015) explored the often unequal power dynamics at play in second language learning in different settings. Extending the description of power dynamics in language learning to symbolic competence in language instruction, presenters, including Dorothy Chun (2015) in “Developing language teachers’ symbolic competence through an online exchange,” proposed that symbolic competence offered language users a way to engage in the power play at the heart of language learning in a globalized context.

That exciting weekend created the opportunity for further discussion of and research into symbolic competence, especially in classroom-based language learning and instruction. Specifically, in this special issue, we address questions that emerged from those discussions, attempting to weave together and extend the various strands of work on symbolic competence:

●      Theory: How can symbolic competence be further theorized?

●      Teaching and learning practices: What is the relevance of symbolic competence to the language classroom?

●      Research: How do we conduct research on symbolic competence, its theoretical potentials and limitations, in relationship to classroom learning and pedagogical practices?

It is these three questions that guide the organization and content of this special issue. This introduction thus includes evolving understandings of symbolic competence as a theoretical construct, potential fields of inquiry that have motivated the articles in this collection, summaries of the articles’ contributions to our understandings, and considerations of future directions for instruction and research focusing on symbolic competence. At the end of the issue, we feature an afterword, which invites readers—language educators and language learning researchers—to imagine concretely where encounters with symbolic competence might lead.

This dissertation centrally explores understandings of foreign/second language and culture learning and its potential to prepare learners to participate in a globalized world. Much research has already been conducted on how globalization has influenced understandings of what it means to learn languages and cultures, how they are taught, and what their ultimate goals are in terms of learning (Blommaert, Leppänen, Pahta, & Räisänen, 2012; Heller & Duchêne, 2012; Kramsch, 2014). This dissertation study adds to this research by responding to Scarino’s (2014) call to expand theoretical understandings of language, culture, and learning in relationship to processes of both globalization and neoliberalism. More specifically, this study explores the potential of a dynamic or complexity orientation (Wesely, 2012) to understand how beliefs, attitudes, and perceptions towards language and culture learning are constructed and negotiated in the relationship between learners and instructors, as complex social beings, and the learning site, as “contestatory discursive site” (Mckay & Wong, 1996)

The site of this ethnographic study can be understood as interconnected contact zones, as defined by Pratt (2008), or social spaces “where disparate cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in highly asymmetrical relations of domination and subordination-like colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths as they are lived out across the globe today" (p. 7). These contact zones are two Spanish language and Latino cultures classrooms situated at a university in San Diego on the border between the United States and Mexico. Primary participants include two third-semester university level Spanish instructors, Yesenia and Vicente, and their respective students.

I collected data in two learning spaces: the language learning classrooms and the sites where students from Yesenia’s class completed community-service learning (CSL) projects; all of these latter CSL sites involved the students’ engagement with local immigrant populations. In both spaces, I employed qualitative methodology with an ethnographic focus, which involved participant observation, extensive field notes, audio- and video-recordings of classes, and collecting class-related textual artifacts and pedagogical materials. I applied discourse analysis to explore classroom interactions, teaching materials, and interviews with a focal group of students from each class, the instructors, the department chair, and personnel related to the CSL program, including staff, site coordinators, community leaders, and community participants.

My analysis suggests that the two language and culture classrooms not only reflect the larger tensions of globalization, but also produce new tensions. The instructors and the learners have differing perceptions of language and culture and the importance of their learning. These understandings are constructed in relationship to their positionings within the classroom, the university, the community, and the local context. The two instructors struggle with their conflicted positioning within the power structure of the university and in the broader relationship between the United States and Latin America, particularly as they are both Mexican immigrants. They also grapple with the instrumental approach that is imposed through the textbook in which learners accumulate grammatical forms and vocabulary while culture is consumed through superficial representations of “Otherness,” presented as imagined tourists visits and the accumulation of geographical and historical information (Thurlow & Jaworski, 2010; Kramsch & Vinall, 2015).

In the first classroom, Yesenia accepts the instrumental approach, encouraging the accumulation of largely decontextualized language forms, and she participates in the construction of what I call a tourist gaze on Latin America (Sheller, 2003; Merrill, 2009, Urry, 2002), believing that it will facilitate learners’ appreciation of her cultural heritage. In the second classroom, Vicente rejects the instrumental approach: he wants to facilitate language and culture learning through critically understanding, reflecting on, and proposing alternatives to the social, economic, and political realities of the contact zone. In both classrooms, however, learners resent these pedagogical choices, their resistance revealing tensions in their own understandings and goals. Learners express a desire to develop cultural awareness so that they can care about the realities of Latin America yet doing so uncomfortably implicates them in larger global relationships in which they must confront their privileged positionings. This process was particularly evident in their CSL experiences in which “putting a face on it” reproduced problematic binaries, such as that of “us” and “them” and “server” and “served,” and in the process reinforced larger power structures and reproduced privilege. Even though the learners want to engage in more than superficial communication they also recognize the limited role of their language and culture learning in their current lives, namely to successfully complete the language requirement, to engage in tourism, and to compete in the global marketplace.

The findings of this study suggest ever increasing tensions between understandings of learning language and culture in the classroom in contrast to the potentiality of this learning as applied outside of the classroom. In both classrooms, the learners and the instructors demonstrate an awareness of the conflicting attitudes, beliefs, and perceptions that they bring to the classroom and how these interact with the teaching materials as well as the local context, yet they do not engage in critical reflection on these understandings. Doing so would require engaging with the central question of power, and how their language and culture learning experiences (re)produce social structures both in and outside of the classroom. In this regard, one of the central limitations of the dynamic or complexity orientation (Wesely, 2012) that I have employed is that it does not centrally interrogate this question of power.

This study points to the need for future research in field of second language acquisition that considers how institutional structures influence understandings of language and language learning, the pedagogical choices that are made in the classroom, and the possibilities for agency on the part of both instructors and learners to explore their own understandings of language in relationship to pedagogical choices and learning. In the end, if one of the primary consequences of globalization and neoliberalism is the exacerbation of asymmetrical power relations and social structures, in order to understand how they have influenced language and culture learning and how to prepare learners to participate in a globalized world would require additional theorizations of how this power is operating.

Language is increasingly understood as a commodified skill that allows learners, seen as language entrepreneurs, to compete in the global marketplace.  Language teaching has become increasingly privatized through the emergence of a global industry that presents language in pre-packaged, standardized forms in response to the needs of the free market. As language becomes both a target—as a technicized skill—and an instrument of neoliberalization, language education finds itself caught in the crossfire. Neoliberal ideology and policy affect decisions about which languages to teach and to learn, when, where, and to whom languages are taught, and how to teach them.

This special issue seeks to build on previous work related to globalization, language standardization, multilingual subjectivities, and linguistic imperialism, amongst other related topics. By situating these discussions within the frame of neoliberal ideologies and practices this issue seeks to critically explore the historically situated ways in which neoliberal discourse has influenced the field of language education in order to open up spaces for critical reflection and action.

This special issue, Critical perspectives on neoliberalism in second / foreign language education, has arisen from our collective, lived experiences as language teachers, as researchers, and as early career scholars. In particular, it comes from changes we have observed in: how languages are understood and taught; the ways that learners and teachers are constructed; the kinds of knowledge about language learning that is produced through research; and the perceived goals of language study within a larger framework of the increased privatization of education. As we noticed the extent to which neoliberal discourse—the discourse of the marketplace—has seeped into these various practices, we came to realize how much it has influenced our own constructions of ourselves, of our learners, and of knowledge itself. It occurred to us that a critical engagement with neoliberalism could help us to examine the changes we were living and to understand our concerns with these experiences.

In this introduction, we address the following central questions: What is neoliberalism? What does neoliberalism have to do with education, and specifically, with second/foreign language education? Why are we taking a critical perspective and what does this look like? We situate our responses to these questions within the field of applied linguistics and place them in dialogue with the articles in this issue. We begin by defining neoliberalism and articulating our goals for this special issue; next, we delve into how these manuscripts intersect with previous research. We conclude with an outline of the manuscripts that comprise the issue and an examination of the paradoxes and contradictions brought to light—and critical spaces opened up—by the special issue as a whole.